Silence Reigns
by LessAttitudeMoreAltitude
Summary: Oneshot. In the wake of a devastating loss, those left behind try to cope. A small look at the aftermath of what we all fear might happen.


**So... warning you guys now. This is a _sad_ oneshot. It's also not at all what I want to happen, but I just can't stop thinking about it...**

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Everything was in a fog. Silence reigned over the _Ghost_ crew, their focus lost as they tried to come to terms with what had happened. They had lost their Spectre One. Now, like a rudderless ship, they were floating aimlessly in their own minds.

Hera wanted nothing more than to curl in Kanan's bed and never get back up. To forget the galaxy around her, to cast away the mission, and to let herself disappear. But she couldn't. The others needed her. She was their leader. It was her responsibility to be the strong one. Even when all hope was lost, she couldn't simply abandon her crew.

And so she went through the motions. Hera slept, ate her rations, and forced her body to recuperate from her stay in the Imperial prison. In the periphery of her awareness, she saw the others seeing to their basic duties. All they could do for now was lay low and wait for orders.

And silence reigned.

Four days had passed when Hera noticed something amiss about their rations. Like a simple binary droid, she had been tracking all of their supplies with an obsessive diligence. She stood in the makeshift storage area, staring at their stash, running the numbers in her head over and over again. This was wrong. There were too many rations here. Was someone not eating when they were supposed to? If five people were eating properly…

She nearly choked as she realized what she was missing.

Five people.

Except there weren't five people here now.

Now there were only four.

Hera fell to her knees and cried.

Once this wave of grief had passed, she stood back up and stared dully at the rations. With a tired sigh, she ran through her numbers again. This time, with the correct number of people.

And she frowned. The numbers still weren't right. Someone hasn't been eating. Hera tried to think back over the past couple of days. Who exactly has she seen eating?

But it was useless. Her memory was a blur. There were only brief glimpses, and she couldn't remember the context of any of them. Zeb's purple fur, Sabine's colorful armor, Chopper's orange chassis…

Hera's frown deepened. Ezra. When was the last time she saw Ezra?

And then it hit her like a punch to the gut. Who else would be grieving as deeply as her? Of course, the entire crew was grieving, but it was different for Ezra. His master had been the most important person in Ezra's world. A pillar of emotional stability and a bright guiding light in Ezra's young life. Their bond had been made only stronger by their shared experiences with the Force.

A bond that had been shattered four days ago.

Hera ran out of the room, her gaze searching over the abandoned holy site. Chopper was in low-power mode, connected to a powercell. Zeb was sitting on a crate, his ears low and a deep frown marring his face as he cleaned his bo-rifle. Sabine was staring at her sketchpad with a mixture of anger and sadness, one hand tangled in her hair as the other tapped a clean paint brush against the pad's edge.

"Where's Ezra?"

It broke the silence, causing the others' heads to snap in her direction. They stared at her with eyes wide in shock.

Zeb was the first to recover. "Meditatin', last I knew."

"Where?"

Sabine pointed over her shoulder with her brush. "In that cave," she said, her voice quiet and somber.

Hera ran in the direction Sabine had gestured. She followed the ledge that encircled the mountain until she came upon an opening that led into the mountain itself. She paused at its entrance. The cave was as silent as the remnants of the _Ghost_ crew. Taking a deep breath and pushing her own emotions aside, Hera stepped inside.

It wasn't much of a cave. It was a chamber that appeared to have been purposefully carved out some centuries ago. A couple openings in the ceiling allowed the natural sunlight to stream in and illuminate its contents. The walls were covered in ancient Lothalian art. They depicted people and animals, all fragments of a story that led to the far side of the chamber. There, an image of a Lothali mountain, a large crack in the stone itself splitting the story in twain.

And kneeling in front of this broken story was Ezra Bridger.

He was meditating. Hera recognized the pose. She had seen it countless times before in her own Jedi. For a moment, she simply gazed at his back. Ezra had yet to move a muscle. The silence seemed thicker in here, almost reverent. There hadn't even been the echo of her booted footsteps as she had walked in. Hera wondered if he had even sensed her in the Force.

Her silent query was answered when Ezra sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "What is it, Hera?" It was barely a whisper, but it sliced through the silence, the crack in his voice like thunder.

She knelt beside him, barely resting a hand on his back. It was like touching glass that white and almost opaque from the millions of spindly fractures. "You haven't eaten," she stated.

Ezra didn't respond. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, sickly dark half-moons resting beneath them. Small tufts of hair, disheveled and greasy, were lank against his pale yet flushed skin.

"How long have you been meditating here?"

There was the soft rustle of fabric as his hands curled into fists on his thighs. "Since we got back," he choked out, as if the grief was slowly strangling him.

Hera knew the feeling.

"I haven't seen him."

Hera frowned. Surely Ezra wasn't referring to...

"After my parents died… I saw them. Just for a moment. They were right there next to me. They _spoke_ to me." Ezra's eyes narrowed in pain, his lips trembling. "I… I thought… maybe… just _one last time…_ " His words melted away under his desperation and hopelessness.

It dragged up another wave of grief, now bitter and sharp as it resonated with the boy's own despair. Hera wrapping her arms around his shoulders as her eyes burned and her vision blurred. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Ezra squeezed his eyes shut, silent tears rolling down his cheeks as his face twisted in agony.

The air was still around them as they cried, as they trembled through the waves of pain that rolled through them both. They cried for their loss. They cried for all the words that had been left unsaid. They cried for the injustice of it all.

And silence reigned.

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 **Leave review and let me know what you thought.**


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